A Pandemic of Preparedness

The leaves are changing and falling, the grasses and weeds are turning brown and scattering their seeds. The earth, in our corner of the world, is slowly dying and preparing for the deep sleep of winter. The animals have eaten heartily to store up a layer of fat for the lean times that are coming. The spiders quickly spin and repair their webs each day in hopes of another tasty meal before they lay eggs and die. The nights are cooler, even though the days remain warm, with a hint of the passing summer, it's not quite over yet, but it will be soon.

There are many things that will soon pass away from our world. Civility. Culture. Massive food production. Easy mobility. Just in time everything. Driving. Processed fossil fuels. Banking. Credit. Electricity. Cell phones. Internet. Information at the touch of a button. Our world has had it's day in the sun with massive growth in population, food production, manufacturing and technology. Just like the waning of the seasons, the stability and control of many countries is also waning. 

Some folks like autumn, the crispness in the air, a time when the rhythm of life gradually slows down. As winter approaches, many people and animals prepare to 'hibernate' from the activities of the summer. As life continues to become less safe, more expensive, and less free, there are many that are planning where they will relocate and hibernate. Just like the ant filling it's colony and tunnels with food for the winter, many people are doing the same, and that is good, very good.

The pace of our work here is sometimes so fast that we can't keep up with ourselves. As we complete projects, one right after the next, it changes the way we live, and that is good. We now hang out the clothes to dry and have started growing food in the greenhouse. We now have three radio antenna towers in the ground waiting for the concrete to cure, so we can increase our ability to communicate. They will soon be powered by solar panels and a battery bank, which is another project on the list. The Survival Radio Relay Net is growing each time it is conducted. We are amazed at the distance between participants, and what that could mean for the safety of everyone involved. We have begun talking to a few folks about starting some sort of community trading post, and have had very positive responses so far. These are just a few of the activities that have occupied our time in the last few weeks.

We want to encourage you again to prepare every needful thing for you and your family, now, while there aren't many restrictions on doing so. If there is a financial collapse or major downturn, what will that do to your ability to prepare? If war breaks out somewhere in the world, how might that affect your ability to prepare? If there is a major natural disaster where you live, how might that affect your ability to prepare? If there is a terrorist attack, how might that affect your ability to prepare? If the government restricts your mobility, ability to buy, your money supply, or ability to relocate, how will that affect your ability to survive? 

Let's face it, regardless of what this 'thing' is that we all know is coming, survival will be the bottom line. It is literally impossible for us, meaning all of us, to be ready for every possible contingency, impossible. What we can do is evaluate our lives, our survival needs and possible wants, to determine what areas are lacking in our preparations. THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. We have had people comment about friends and neighbors that say they know they need to buy some extra food or something, but they don't. We all know people that just laugh and tell us we're crazy. We all know people that think we should be turned into the authorities for hoarding or something. The time for warning our neighbors will soon be past. The time to be very, very serious about completing those tasks that will help increase the survival rate of our families is here. I pray, truly pray, that we are all wrong, very wrong, but unfortunately, I don't think so. 

Every single day is filled with a drive to work and complete our survival projects. We have never worked harder in our lives. Literally. We've talked about it several times recently. Why would two retired people entering the 'golden years' work their tails off everyday? I hope that sharing our preparations will infect people with with an uncontrollable desire to do the same. I pray that this infection will be so contagious that it will become a pandemic. An uncontrollable pandemic of preparedness. That wouldn't be such a bad illness to suffer from, would it? Unfortunately, there are more people that have been vaccinated against this illness, than suffer from it. They are immune to preparing anything for themselves and their families, and when the time comes, their immunity will kill them. If you're not suffering from a full blown infection of preparedness-itis, work on it. Your example may be the one thing that infects another person, and you may never know it. Be a carrier. We pray that our example can somehow be infectious.

Until next time - Fern

The Frost Cometh

Well, it's our turn to have our first frost tonight. The nice piece of trivia about having a frost tonight is October 31st is our first average frost date. This year, we are hitting it right on the nose.

We have had a faucet trying to leak on the north side of the house for some time now. Yesterday it decided to become a small, constant little stream. So, this afternoon, Frank replaced it. I thought it would be more difficult and take more time than it did. Having a husband that is able to fix just about anything is a blessing indeed. 

Since the frost is coming tonight, I picked the last of the peppers and tomatoes this afternoon. It' kind of sad it's going to frost because the okra, tomatoes, peppers and purple hull peas are all just blooming away right now. We have had some warm days in the last couple of weeks and these plants just don't seem to be ready to shut down yet. I was surprised to find that even though the okra has been blooming, and still has a number of buds, I didn't find one pod of okra to pick this afternoon. It has been about a week since I picked the last few pods, so I expected to find some today. The only reason I can think of is that we have been having cool nights in the 50's for a while and okra does not like cool weather.

I am very curious to see how the turnips, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, carrots, mangel beets, brussel sprouts and potatoes do with this cold snap tonight. You can see from the weather forcast that we are not expecting anymore freezing weather very soon. I've read that the flavor of turnips actually improves with a frost, and the same is true for brussel sprouts. But I'm curious if the turnip leaves will die with the frost. If they do the chickens will miss them since I feed them the greens every morning.

The turnip patch

Kale, swiss chard, broccoli and one lonely cabbage

Carrots and Mangel beets

 

I know the potatoes will die back with the frost. Since I am not quite up to digging them up yet, and we have had some come up here and there from the ones we missed during the spring, we wanted a way to find them after the plants died back. Frank had a great recommendation. We have some of that bright orange spray paint that is used to mark the ground for construction sites and such. It worked great and made it easy to mark each plant. The potato plants haven't grown as big as I would like. They were very, very slow to

come up and get going. I can only speculate why. It was still pretty hot when I planted them, so I wondered if that affected their growth rate. After they finally came up and the weather cooled off, the growth rate increased quite a bit, but the resulting plants are about half the size of the springtime plants. I don't expect to have near the harvest we had in June, but I know the potatoes will keep better, stay crisper and be slower to sprout, so I can use some of them for seed potatoes come spring. That makes the effort to grow this second crop worthwhile.

Even though autumn has arrived, I look forward to being able to continue our harvest for a little longer. The more we can learn about extending our growing season, while we still have time to practice and it is not a life and death situation, the better we off we are in the long run. It also gives us the opportunity to increase our harvest, and have more food to eat. You just can't beat that.

Until next time - Fern

The Beauty of Autumn

Most of you know that my daytime job is teaching. About four times a year we have Parent/Teacher conferences which extends my day job well into the evening. So tonight you get to enjoy some beautiful fall pictures Frank and I took recently while we were out for a drive. Enjoy.

A scene down the road

Local church and cemetery

One of our neat bridges

Heading south

Beautiful little creek

Creek to the south

Same creek to the north

The neighbor's tree

Creek heading west

There's no place like home.

Until next time - Fern